Fast heart rate can mean an early death

A HIGH heart rate at rest is a warning sign of an increased risk of early death, even amongst the fit and healthy, researchers say.

They discovered that an increase of between ten and 22 beats a minute correlated to a 16 per cent increase of an early death.

A resting heart rate – the number of heart beats per minute – is determined by an individual’s level of physical fitness, circulating hormones, and the autonomic nervous system.

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A rate at rest of between 60 and 100 beats per minute is considered normal, reports the British Medical Journal.

Those who are physically active tend to have a lower heart rate at rest, but a team from Copenhagen University Hospital set out to show if heart rate had any bearing on mortality, regardless of fitness.

They monitored the health of 3,000 men, beginning in 1985 and seeing checks carried out over a 16-year period.

By 2001 almost four out of ten had died.

The team discovered that a high resting heart rate was associated with lower levels of physical fitness, higher blood pressure and weight, and higher levels of circulating blood fats.

Similarly, men who were physically active tended to have lower resting heart rates.

But the results showed that the higher the resting heart rate, the higher was the risk of death, irrespective of fitness level.